Hong Kong leader John Lee on Tuesday praised the 27.5 per cent voter turnout in the city\u2019s weekend election, a record low since the territory returned to Chinese rule in 1997. Sunday\u2019s district council election was the first held under new rules introduced under Beijing\u2019s direction that effectively shut out all pro-democracy candidates. \u201cThe turnout of 1.2 million voters has indicated that they supported the election, they supported the principles,\u201d Lee said at a news conference. \u201cIt is important that we focus our attention on the outcome of the election, and the outcome will mean a constructive district council, rather than what used to be a destructive one,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Sunday\u2019s turnout was significantly less than the record 71.2 per cent of Hong Kong\u2019s 4.3 million registered voters who participated in the last election, held at the height of anti-government protests in 2019, which the pro-democracy camp won by a landslide. Lee said there was resistance to Sunday\u2019s election from prospective candidates who were rejected under the new rules for being not qualified or lacking the principles of \u201cpatriots\u201d administering Hong Kong. \u201cThere are still some people who somehow are still immersed in the wrong idea of trying to make the district council a political platform for their political means, achieving their gains rather than the district\u2019s gain,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The district councils, which primarily handle municipal matters such as organising construction projects and public facilities, were Hong Kong\u2019s last major political bodies mostly chosen by the public. But under the new electoral rules introduced under a Beijing order that only \u201cpatriots\u201d should administer the city, candidates must secure endorsements from at least nine members of government-appointed committees that are mostly packed with Beijing loyalists, making it virtually impossible for any pro-democracy candidates to run. An amendment passed in July also slashed the proportion of directly elected seats from about 90 per cent to about 20 per cent.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe de facto boycott indicates low public acceptance of the new electoral arrangement and its democratic representativeness,\u201d Dominic Chiu, senior analyst at research firm Eurasia Group, wrote in a note. Chiu said the low turnout represents a silent protest against the shrinking of civil liberties in the city following Beijing\u2019s imposition of a tough national security law that makes it difficult to express opposition. \u201cAgainst this backdrop, the public took the elections as a rare opportunity to make their opposition to the new normal known \u2013 by not turning up to vote,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Since the introduction of the law, many prominent pro-democracy activists have been arrested or have fled the territory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hong Kong leader John Lee on Tuesday praised the 27.5 per cent voter turnout in the city\u2019s weekend election, a\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":16721,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[186],"tags":[3775,4858,4860,991,2760,4857,4859,4856],"class_list":["post-16720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world","tag-activists","tag-chinese-interference","tag-civil-liberties","tag-elections","tag-hong-kong","tag-john-lee","tag-low-voter-turnout","tag-pro-democracy"],"reading_time":"3 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16720\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}